Unità di ricerca di Padova

Mobility and Control across and beyond the Early Modern Mediterranean

Dept. of Historical and Geographic Sciences and the Ancient World (University of Padua)

The Research Unit focuses their activity on human mobility, control and identification procedures across and beyond the early modern Mediterranean. Recent studies in migration history have shown how mobility was a structural element of human societies that goes beyond the “mobility transition” hypothesis, stimulating settlement processes and forms of control that needed to be understood in a long-term and comparative perspective. From an actor-oriented perspective our research focuses on groups and individuals (migrants, merchants, travellers, craftsmen, beggars, etc.) were or were not able to cross geo-political borders in shaping or creating new ones, redefining new or multiple identities. From an institution-oriented perspective we investigate how States, corps and other bodies faced these movements, focusing on the communication with the authority and on policy-making practices.

Our research includes a wide range of topics as labour relations, forms and control of mobility, social identities, boundary-formation, space-construction, knowledge transmission, cross-cultural trade, commodity chains and productive areas. Our studies use (and discuss) methodologies of micro and macro-history, connecting and comparing the Mediterranean with other seas and areas across the world.

Group Members

Researchers from the University of Padua

Dr. Andrea Caracausi (M, coordinator) is Assistant Professor of Early Modern History at the University of Padua and specializes in the social and economic history of Italy and Mediterranean World. He is an expert of the history of work and migration in the late medieval and early modern period, including topics as guilds, merchant networks and institutions, women’s work, child labour and legal proceedings in the early modern period. Currently he teaches a BA course on “Early Modern History” and a MA course on “Early Modern Social and Economic History” within the Erasmus Mundus Master TPTI (Techniques, Patrimoines, Territoires de l’Industrie / Techniques, Heritage, Industrial Landscape).

He received a B.A. in History (University of Padua) and a Ph.d. in Economic and Social History (Bocconi University). He has been Adjunct Professor in “Business History” and “Economic History” at the Universities of Bocconi-Milan (2010), Trieste (2011-12), Venice-Ca’ Foscari (2011-12) and Verona (2013). Formerly he was Research Fellow at the Universities of Bocconi, Ca’ Foscari and Padua. He is the recipient of fellowships and research grants awarded from several public and private institutions as the “Chamber of Commerce of Venice”, the “Gerda Henkel Stiftung” (Düsseldorf) and the Royal Society of Edinburgh (UK).

He is member of collaborative international research projects and groups as the “Global Collaboratory in the History of Labour Relations, 1500-2000” (International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam) and the ANR-Project “Les privilèges économiques en Europe, XVe-XIXe siècles: étude quantitative et comparative” (local group: EA 3350 Laboratoire Analyse comparée des pouvoirs, université de Paris-Est-Marne-la-Vallée); the ‘Consumption and Material Culture in Early Modern Europe’, coordinated by the University of Jena.

Outreach activities include the participation and management of projects in an inter-sectoral way and with non-academic institutions. In particular he was project manager of “History of Alps program” financed by Wikimedia CH in 2012-2014 and he was appointed as scientific expert for the historical contents of the “Padiglione zero” at EXPO 2015.

Recent publications

‘Beaten Children and Women’s Work in Early Modern Italy’, Past and Present (2014), 222 (1): 95-128

Dr. Alessandro Buono (M) Is Research fellow the University of Padua within the Firb – Futuro in Ricerca 2012 project ‘Maritime Borders in the Mediterranean: how permeable are they? Exchange, Control and Deny of Access, 16th-21st century’, awarded by the MIUR (2013-2016). He gained a BA in History (University of Milan), a Ph.D. in Early Modern and Modern Age Historical Studies (University of Florence), and a Master Degree in History and Comparative Studies of Political and Legal Institutions in Mediterranean Europe (University of Messina, Milan and Córdoba). In 2009-2010 he held a specialisation fellowship at Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (Madrid, Spain).

Formerly Research Fellow at University of Milan (2012-2013), he has been taking part in Italian research projects funded by MIUR and is currently involved in a number of international research networks (Red Columnaria; The Spanish Faction Research Network; Centro Interuniversitario per la Storia delle Polizie e del Controllo del Territorio for which he set up and act as webmaster for the <http://www.cepoc.it> portal) and he is a member of academic associations (SISEM, ASPHS). He have taught at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice and the University of Milan and he is a member of the editorial committee for the peer-reviewed Società e Storia journal (classified as a first class historical review by the MUIR’s ANVUR assessment agency).

He has presented papers and been selected in international peer reviewed conferences both in Italy and abroad. He has also acquired skills in organising seminars and conference panels and in the publishing sphere in editing a peer-reviewed journal and editing a book with Italian, French and Canadian scholars. He is the author of Esercito, istituzioni, territorio. Alloggiamenti militari e «case herme» nello Stato di Milano (secoli XVI e XVII), Firenze, Firenze University Press, 2009.

Within the Firb 2012 project he is currently pursuing a research on Work, migration and control across the maritime borders of the early modern Mediterranean. A quantitative and qualitative analysis, The research focuses on the idea of “mobile” borders, which were first crossed by workers seeking for job and which were continuously redefined by relationship between the central governments, local communities, corporate bodies and individuals. In particular the research analyses the impact of labour mobility across borders, evaluating policy-making practices and the processes of inclusion and exclusion in the labour market. This research line will combine micro-historical case studies in a both qualitative and quantitative way.

Dr. Benedetta Crivelli (F) is Research fellow the University of Padua within the Firb – Futuro in Ricerca 2012 project ‘Maritime Borders in the Mediterranean: how permeable are they? Exchange, Control and Deny of Access, 16th-21st century’, awarded by the MIUR (2013-2016). She specializes in the social and economic history of Milan and Iberian World in the Early Modern age. She received a M.Sc in History (University of Milan) and Ph.d in Economic History (University of Verona). She was teaching assistant in “Economic History of Europe” at the University of Milan-Faculty of Political, Economic and Social Sciences (2013-14). Formerly, she was research fellow at University of Milan in the research project “Lombardia, Europa” awarded by Fondazione Cariplo (Milan – 2013). She received fellowship from “Banco di Napoli Fondazione” (Naples – 2013). Simultaneously, she is teaching assistant in “Economic History”, “Business History” and “Economic and Social History of Modern age” at University of Milan. Research has been published in book and journal as Hispania, Journal of European Economic History and Storia Economica.

Within the Firb 2012 project she is currently pursuing a research on Atlantic dynamics and Mediterranean frontiers: global capitals and interactions during the early modern period. The project aims to study the circulation of goods and capitals across the maritime frontiers in the Mediterranean, with a focus on the interconnections between the Atlantic dynamics and the Eastern Mediterranean during the first modern age. The research program aims therefore to reconstruct the networks of private credit and credit instruments that contributed to the rise of small-medium trading companies operating in the Mediterranean (and particularly in Venice) and their role for interconnections in the Eurasian trade across the frontiers of the eastern Mediterranean and of the Atlantic.

Dr. Angela Falcetta (F) is Research fellow the University of Padua within the Firb – Futuro in Ricerca 2012 project ‘Maritime Borders in the Mediterranean: how permeable are they? Exchange, Control and Deny of Access, 16th-21st century’, awarded by the MIUR (2013-2016). She specializes in social history of migrants and minorities in the early modern Mediterranean. She holds a Master’s degree in Early Modern History (University of Florence) and a Ph.d. in Historical and historical-religious studies (University of Padua). She was awarded a scholarship at the School of Modern Greek Language of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (summer 2013) and she participated in the Erasmus Programme at Oxford University as Ph.d. Visiting student during the spring 2012. She received Research Grants from Luigi Einaudi Foundation (Turin, 2009-2010) and University of Sassari (June-September 2014). She is author of papers selected in international peer reviewed conferences both in Italy and abroad.

Within the Firb 2012 project she is currently pursuing a research on Cultural frontiers and local communities in Central and Eastern Mediterranean: the case of the Orthodox presence in the Catholic world. By observing the various and continuous flow of Orthodox-Christians – merchants and soldiers, clergymen and brokers – and their settlements across the frontier of Catholic Mediterranean, the project aims to draw the bounds of this contact-zone and its inner dynamics: in particular the social and normative processes of boundary-formation, at confessional and communal level, within the multiple local horizons as well as on regional scale and, eventually, the confused movements of individuals and their entangled trajectories across the region and its multiple boundaries.

Chiara Lucrezio Monticelli is Research fellow the University of Padua within the Firb – Futuro in Ricerca 2012 project ‘Maritime Borders in the Mediterranean: how permeable are they? Exchange, Control and Deny of Access, 16th-21st century’, awarded by the MIUR (2013-2016). Currently he teaches a MA course on “Early Modern History” and a BA couse on “History and Civilization” and she is Faculty Member in the Ph.D. program “Storia e Scienze filosofico-sociali” at University of Rome “Tor Vergata”. She gained her BA in History (University of Rome “La Sapienza”), a Ph.D. in Political and Social History of Modern and Contemporary History (University of Rome “Tor Vergata”) and she was post-doc research fellow at École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales of Paris, University of Rome “Tor Vergata” and Deutsches Historisches Institut in Rome. She has been taking part in Italian research projects funded by MIUR and European project for the French-Italian cooperation “Galileo” and she is currently involved in a number of international research networks (Centre d’études des Normes Juridiques “Yan Thomas”-CENJ, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris; Centro Interuniversitario per la Storia delle Polizie e del Controllo del Territorio-CEPOC). She has presented papers and organized seminars and panels in national and international peer reviewed conferences.

Within the Firb 2012 project she is currently pursuing a research on the Napoleonic conquest of Rome in 1809 in a closer relationship with the processes of definition of Imperial spaces and National identities in Europe. The contrast between “colonial” practices of urban government and the political use of the imperial idea of ancient Rome produced significant effects in the field of administration and in the representation of the city. From this perspective, particular attention is devoted to the institutions of social control of the human mobility in the Mediterranean and in Italian area (police bodies, consuls).